As you’ve probably seen on a number of Revision3 video podcasts lately, the internet TV giant celebrated its 5th anniversary at the end of May, and celebrated last week with a massive party in San Fran with the live taping of Diggnation from last week, tricks and performances by Brian Brushwood of Scam School and stand-up by Alex Koll of ROFL!

Five years ago, a handful of frustrated technology and video professionals surveyed the TV landscape, and were not happy with what they saw. A promising and much-loved network, TechTV, had just been emasculated by the cable equivalent of Dunder-Mifflin. Hope, however, was on the horizon, as Apple had just announced a photo-iPod, and video was on the way. New encoding techniques, coupled with broadband advances finally made it possible to actually deliver compelling video through the World Wide Web. And so these intrepid pioneers decided to start making shows the way they wanted, covering the stuff they wanted to cover. And five years ago, the first episode of SYSTM was released to the world.

From iTunes to Youtube to full-on HDTV, we’ve come a long way since then. Our roster of 20+ shows have been enjoyed by hundreds of millions of viewers, we’ve given birth to an entire industry of content that lives apart from – and is now rivaling – the same lowest-common-denomiator pablum served up by almost all traditional TV.

Even more impressive, we’ve actually changed traditional TV – and the Internet – along the way. More than one traditional show now incorporates our signature host-sponsorships, we’ve spotted shows that incorporate drinking in their narrative, and our hosts have become frequent guests on traditional TV.

And that’s the same spirit that started our blog here, and the communities that live around it and from which TechTV Forever was formed. TechTV is long long gone, and this site has likely had a longer shelf-life than TechTV ever did, but I’m glad Revision3 is still here delivering quality video programming, defining IPTV, and I’m glad we’re here to support it.